You know, the more I think about it, the more I’m convinced that technology today is just making things way too easy for us. It’s making it so that we don’t have to think as much as we used to. In short, we’re not really being challenged and we’re getting lazy. So what I’m suggesting in this article is that we try to challenge ourselves. How can we do this? Ah, well that’s where you’re going to have to read the rest of this article to get some ideas. Hopefully, some of these will trigger a spark in you.
I want to begin with synthesizers because that’s where I think we’ve really gotten lazy. Let’s face it, synths today can do just about anything. There really are no limitations. And sample playback engines allow us to recreate authentic sounding orchestras if we want. In a way that’s good but in another way that’s not so good. Need a sound? No problem. Just go to your go to synth for that sound. No need to try to think through things.
Well, here’s what I’m proposing. Don’t go to your go to synth. Pull out one of your cheap plugins and see what you can do with it. The other day I laid down about 24 tracks for an electronic piece. I could have used all my top of the line synths to do it, like Omnisphere, Massive, Zebra 2 and others. But I didn’t do that. Instead I pulled out my free Synth1.
Now let me tell you about this synth. It’s really basic. It has a couple of oscillators, two LFOs, a few mod sources, filter that can go LP or HP, basic ADSR, arpeggiator, a few simple effects, unison mode, poly or mono mode and that’s about it. I mean it’s really basic and it’s free. You can’t do really complex sounds with it. In fact, it’s mostly good for emulating old analog synths like Oberheim and Moog.
Anyway, of my 24 tracks, about 20 of them were made with this free synth, using multiple instances and pulling up some interesting patches. With some slick arranging and other outboard effects, the piece ended up sounding really cool. It was almost hard to believe that most of it was made with a free VST.
Now I didn’t have to do this. But I wanted to challenge myself to see if I could come up with something good while limiting the tools that I was using. For the most part, I’d say the experiment was a success.
Here’s something else that you can do to challenge yourself.
Let’s say you’re primarily a composer. All the material you record is original. So you’re able to do just about anything that you want. That’s great. But how about trying this? How about picking out a song from a group or artist that you like and doing your own version of it. Your goal is to make it sound as much like the original as possible, right down to that fuzz guitar lead.
This might take some doing, especially if it’s a very old song using very old equipment. Some old sounds are very hard to replicate. I don’t care how good your modern gear is.
For example, you know the fuzz guitar lead that Tony Peluso played on the Carpenters song “Goodbye To Love?” Well, I did some research on how he created that sound and let me tell you, good luck finding that gear today. And modern emulations aren’t very good. I’ve tried my guitar rig fuzz and it’s not even close. None of them are. So something like this could be a challenge, especially when you have a very identifiable sound that you’re trying to replicate. Good! That’s the whole idea behind this exercise, to challenge yourself. See how close you can come to the original.
Let’s turn that around now. Let’s say all you do is cover songs of artists and you’re very good at it. Your recreations are almost identical to the originals. Great! Now, how about trying to compose and record your own song? What’s that you say? You’ve never written a song before in your life? Great! This should be a real challenge.
Now you don’t have to do this in a vacuum. You can listen to all those songs that you’ve been recreating over the years for inspiration. Heck, I don’t know one songwriter who doesn’t use the music of others for inspiration. That’s why there’s really nothing totally original coming out of songwriters today. Every song sounds a little like something that came before it. I don’t even remember the last time we had true innovation.
I’m not done though.
After you’ve written your song, now try to record it in the style of one of the songs that you’ve replicated over the years. See if you can make YOUR song sound like song X. I’m not talking musically. I’m talking sound wise. That means getting the right drums sounds, guitar sounds, etc. When you’re done recording your song, what you want people to say is “Wow, that sounds just like a Cars song” or whatever group or artist you’re going for. Don’t give them any hints. Don’t lead them in anyway. Just say something like “I want you to listen to this.” See what they say.
Here’s something else you can do. Let’s say you only do instrumental tracks because you sound like a dying cat when you sing. Great! Write a song with lyrics and sing them. That’s right. Don’t hire a singer. Sing the song yourself in all your dying cat glory. You don’t have to let anybody hear it if you don’t want to, but challenge yourself to do it. You may be surprised at how good you sound with a lot of vocal processing and some autotune.
And these are just a few of the things you can do to challenge yourself. I’m sure you can think of more. And by challenging ourselves, we force ourselves to grow as artists.
Isn’t that ultimately what we want?
For The Love Of Music,
Steven “Wags” Wagenheim